A magical love that cannot die

What he told doctors when they had grim news? ‘Just tell Deb.’ His funeral instructions? A chorus of Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. His last words? ‘I love you.’ Brave, tearful and deeply moving, a spellbinding interview with Paul Daniels’ widow: the lovely Debbie Mc

BURSTING through their living room door dressed in nothing but a tight Lycra running suit, Paul Daniels proceeded to jog back and forth past his wife on the sofa until she giggled. ‘I’m not a person who gets depressed, but one day I was feeling a bit down, which is very unlike me,’ the ‘Lovely’ Debbie McGee recalls. ‘Paul said he was popping out to the shops. The next thing I know he’s running through this room in a man’s keep-fit outfit. It didn’t suit him but he looked hysterical and you couldn’t help but laugh. He’d gone to Henley, about four miles from us, just to buy it. It sounds mad but that was Paul. He would go to great lengths to play jokes and would do anything to make you laugh.’

The 57-year-old can’t quite believe that she is now planning Paul’s funeral. She was at his side for the past month since he was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour and was there in the early hours of Thursday morning when he peacefully passed away in their bed aged 77.

They had known each other for 36 years, married for 28, and rarely spent a night apart.

So when I meet Debbie at the couple’s £2.5 million home on the banks of the River Thames in Berkshire just a day later, for this, her first exclusive print interview, I’m surprised to find her utterly composed. Immaculately dressed in a revealing red Ted Baker dress and stiletto shoes – a present from Paul – with perfectly painted pink nails, platinum hair piled high and make-up fixed, the 5ft 1in blonde flits around in what she calls ‘ Debbie mode’, making tea and cooing over the three white rabbits Paul used in his magic shows.

A presenter on Radio Berkshire for eight years, she insists that she will be in the studio for her slot this week as usual.

The show, it seems, must go on. But the grief she clearly feels for the loss of the man she calls the love of her life – and who the rest of us know as the nation’s best-loved magician – is never far from the surface. She is tinier than ever – in the last month she has lost half a stone – and looks worn out, the result of nightly vigils by Paul’s side. During our talk, she gulps back tears as she recalls his last moments.

‘I’m in such shock, it hasn’t sunk in,’ she says when we finally sit down. ‘It’s been so quick. I don’t think Paul and I will meet again in heaven. I don’t believe in the afterlife – I wish I did.

‘But Paul’s presence is still everywhere. I’m waiting for him to walk through the door.

‘You don’t feel heartbroken, you feel like your heart’s been shattered. It’s like every part of your being has been torn apart.’

She agrees that the death of the man who regularly pulled in TV audiences of 15million on The Paul Daniels Magic Show from 1979 to 1994 will not sink in properly until after his funeral. Debbie is busy organising a private ceremony for close friends and family near the couple’s home, but reveals there will be a public memorial.

She has already given the undertaker a solid silver wand presented to Paul as an award which will be placed on the top of his coffin. He will wear a favourite suit and tie.

The songs are yet to be decided but will include Sammy Davis Jr’s Mr Bojangles and Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. ‘He always told people to sing that when they were sad,’ Debbie says. All three of his sons from his first marriage – Paul Junior, 55, Martin, 52 and Gary, 47, will be at the funeral as will his ex-wife, Jacqueline Skipworth, 73. The only instruction Paul left was a wish to be cremated. ‘He was so claustrophobic, the idea of being buried alive terrified him,’ Debbie says. The couple never discussed his death and, astonishingly, Paul only once mentioned his life-threatening illness that had caused him to be rushed into hospital in February.

Two weeks’ ago, they had been sitting watching the ducks from their floor-to-ceiling windows, when he suddenly fixed Debbie with a hard stare. ‘He asked, “What on earth is wrong with me?” Debbie recalls.

‘I don’t know where I got my strength from but I didn’t cry. I said, “Darling, you’ve got a brain tumour.” Paul didn’t react. He just looked at me and then looked out of the window at the ducks. I think he knew then, he must have taken it in – he took other things in – but he didn’t ask any more. He didn’t want to know. I never ever said it was terminal.’

They had both been starring in Aladdin at the Ipswich Regent late last year when Debbie first noticed a problem. He seemed constantly tired, was struggling to remember his lines and seemed confused.

After various tests, a CT scan at the Royal Berkshire Hospital revealed the tumour.

‘Paul said he didn’t want to know what was wrong with him then. He told the doctor, “Just tell Deb.” The consultant showed me the scan.

‘I am always a “cup overflowing” kind of person but I remember thinking, “I can’t take this in.” But it was there on the screen, he had a brain tumour – the most aggressive type you can get. The consultant said he didn’t believe it was operable. I broke down but then my Debbie mode kicked in. I thought, “Right we’re just going to get on with this.”’

Later, the specialists delivered their devastating diagnosis: it was inoperable and Paul only had a

I don’t think we’ll meet again in heaven...